This Gnarls Barkley cover of Radiohead’s “Reckoner” totally manages to make up for the fact that I didn’t really care for “The Odd Couple”.
Year: 2008 (Page 2 of 8)
Inspired by what Merlin is doing with 43 Folders, I’m taking a step back from what I set out to do with Preshrunk. Yeah, I know that I just relaunched it. No, I’m not talking about walking away from it. It feels too good to be back to just up and stop again.
What I’ve realized tho is that the internet doesn’t need yet another daily t-shirt blog — it needs a better t-shirt blog. Spitting back every press release and sale notice that drops into my inbox doesn’t make for compelling content. The reason people show up and read Preshrunk is because they actually care about finding wonderful tees. What’s more, people actually trust my taste.
I know. It befuddles me too. But they seriously do. At least that’s what the feedback coming in says.
When it comes down to it, the last thing I should be doing is running something I’m only kinda feeling. Or trying too hard to make sure people have fresh content to read when they check their feeds or hit the site. When I’m up against a self-imposed deadline, I end up putting out stuff that’s not up to par. You guys seriously have no idea how hard I’ve had to fight myself to not go back and rewrite entire entries when I read them in the morning. When you realize that you’ve turned out more than one post in the past month that reads like bad Geekologie copy — which isn’t really that great to begin with — it’s time to examine what you’re doing.
So if you don’t see new shit up on Preshrunk daily, please know that I’m just trying to make things better rather than fall into a routine. As they say, it’s all about quality over quantity. Six months off won’t happen again tho, honest. Maybe a few days at worst. Expect a good excuse from me if that happens tho, alright?
Ever since I’d heard about History Hacker, I’ve been geeked about it. Now, maker extraordinaire and super rad video blogger Bre Pettis, is getting a crack at the big leagues when his show airs on The History Channel this Friday at 8 PM.
The pilot involves Tesla and his back and forth feud with Edison and has a style that seems like it was made for the ritalin set. So if the promo video above looks interesting at all, consider adding it to your DVR and checking it out.
Sir Ben Kingsley playing Ian MacKaye? Why the hell not?
Normally I’d say “that’s a stretch” — but the whole shaved head/fully bald thing actually sort of makes for inspired casting.
While there are a lot of URL shortening sites out there, I’ve actually grown quite fond of tr.im recently. It’s a little thin on preferences right now, but there are three things that set it apart from the other services out there:
Automatic Twitter and Identi.ca Posting
Whenever you shorten a URL — thru the bookmarklet or their site — tr.im does the standard behavior and copies the output to your clipboard. On top of that tho, it also offers you the opportunity to sign in to your favorite microblogging platform and post the URL directly from tr.im itself. Removing the extra steps of opening up Twitter and pasting a link into the window makes me a very happy camper.
Zero Account Creation
Want to save your settings but don’t want to make another account? No worries! tr.im accepts both Twitter and Identi.ca logins. Saving a couple minutes of my time by not having to sign up for yet another service is rad to me in a way that words can’t quite describe.
Click Tracking
If you’re signed in to tr.im, you actually get stats on the number of times a link has been clicked. So if you’ve direct messaged or emailed a friend with a link and want to know if they’ve given it a look, there’s no need to bug them about it. Just load up the tr.im homepage and see if they have or not. Simple enough, right?
It also has the added bonus of being a super short URL that isn’t abstract like is.gd or zz.gd are. Seriously dudes, what’s up with those names? I mean, bravo for scoring a 4 character domain. That’s a feat in and of itself. Still, if what your site does isn’t fairly obvious from the URL, it kind of fails for most passive users before it gets out of the gate. tr.im actually manages to be nice and descriptive without being too heavy — and that, coupled with the reasons above, is why I like it.
So give tr.im a try and see if it integrates with your workflow. Even if you’re a bit skeptical about something as basic as a URL shortener, you might actually be pleasantly surprised at just how well it works.